Multiliteracies, Multimodality and Teacher Professional Learning

In the midst of an epochal shift in the communications environment, rapid cultural change and transformations in knowledge, there is an urgent need for bold educational responses. While responsibility for educational resourcing belongs to the broader community, the extent and quality of pedagogical change ultimately rests with teachers. Student learning is dependent on teachers developing knowledge and pedagogical practices. Central to our educational response to the changed environment is teacher professional learning. This scholarly book draws on research which investigated the impact on teachers of their engagement with the New London Group's multiliteracies theory. Four Australian teachers of primary school students committed themselves to exploring multiliteracies theory and to putting their learning into practice in diverse classroom settings. Anne Cloonan, then a literacy policy and project officer at a state Education Department, explores the context, processes and impact of film-driven participatory action research action learning, in which the teachers researched their learning and practice over a period of eight months. She describes new ways of working shoulder to shoulder with teachers to develop resources and policy advice while deepening their professionalism. She offers contextualised examples of teachers extending their print-based literacy pedagogies to incorporate multimodal literacy practices. This book will be of interest to teachers, educational consultants, policy makers, and researchers concerned with: agentive collaborative teacher learning; innovative policy and resource development; enhancing teachers' professionalism; and the operationalisation of multiliteracies theory.